


Precision of Language

by superfluouskeys



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Slow Burn, Stream of Consciousness, also kinda implies, kinda? like yellow has a disjointed thought process, yellow diamond/pink diamond - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-19
Updated: 2017-03-19
Packaged: 2018-10-07 19:17:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10367553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superfluouskeys/pseuds/superfluouskeys
Summary: A series of connected one-shots navigating the complicated relationship between Yellow Diamond and the rebellious Peridot. [Eventual femslash]





	

She had no way of knowing Blue had been here until she made contact with the Earth.  The information flooded her, momentarily clouded her vision, imprints of Blue walking, wandering aimlessly, seeking, grieving.

Grieving.  Loss.  Still feeling.  Always flooded with the stuff, a river of remorse flowing forever from her eyes.  It was sickening.  Dizzying.  She did her best to ignore it.

No sense in it, and yet, how else did she mean to explain her own presence here?  Failed Peridot (rebellious Peridot).  Needed to assess the situation, determine whether the project could be salvaged--personally, lest another of her best gems fell victim to organic nonsense.

(Feeble excuse.)

She touched her fingertips to the ruins of Pink's ship, now nearly unrecognizable, overgrown with filthy organic matter, watched a wave of memories flash before her eyes from the days when the ship was perfect and Pink was alive and she didn't so often feel as though her physical form were somehow on the brink of collapse.

Felt in the ground beneath her feet before she heard the faint rustle of footsteps in grass.  Gem.  Small.  Strange, different, changed, altered, yet somehow familiar.

Peridot.

"The failed Peridot," she guessed without moving.  "The one who uses her gem type like a name as though she were special.  As though there were not a hundred cut today who could achieve what she could not.  What gives her the right to call herself Peridot, above all others?"

The Peridot mutters something unintelligible.  She feels it vibrating in the ground, senses the way her thoughts work in the way the atmosphere shifts around her.  "The ones who named me...called me by that name...thought I was special," she says, slowly.

She allowed her fingertips to fall from Pink's ship, allows the memories, the data, to slip away, just out of her grasp.  "What a surprisingly coherent response," she remarked.  "We are named primarily as others name us, a meaningless identifier, and yet Yellow Diamond is not the name I hold in my mind.  It seems you attach significance to this name that others have seen fit to bestow upon you."

"Well.  Yes.  I feel like...I'm...Peridot."

"Although there are thousands more who share your name, you feel like Peridot."  The word, feel, is clumsy on her tongue, unpleasant to her ears, wide and piercing.  Ugly.  Senseless.  What's the use in it?

"I...yes.  Yes."  The atmosphere shifts around her and thoughts vibrate like data, I am me, I am Peridot, I am unique even if others share my name.

She blinks and waves the thoughts away.  They are cloying at best.

"Blue Diamond came, too," says Peridot.

"You think I don't know." 

It wasn't a question, but the Peridot responded, regardless.  "Did you come to grieve for Pink Diamond?"

Grieve.  Grieving.  Loss.  A river of remorse flowing from her eyes.  Sickening.  Dizzying.  No.  No.  No.  "Perhaps.  After a fashion.  It is an imprecise word."

"Grieve?"

"Obviously.  Feeling words.  Organic filth.  A disease of the mind."

"On the contrary," said the Peridot.  "I have observed that many gems experience the things described by feeling words.  I don't...always understand them.  But you grieve when you miss something that isn't there anymore.  I don't think that's imprecise."  The Peridot intended to add some show of deference, then realized that the time for such things was behind them.

Why she humoured this banal exchange was a mystery in itself.  She remembered with some small fondness the Peridot who was her favourite for a time, who never let her down, whose loyalty was so absolute she could feel it in the atmosphere around her.

This Peridot was much changed, and yet, impossibly, much the same.

She returned her attention to Pink's ship, but she isn't quite looking, isn't quite seeing, isn't quite processing.

"Do you have a name?  One you...hold...in your mind, as you said?"

"A senseless question."

She felt the Peridot grasping for words again.  Found it curious, perhaps even a bit sad that one who was once so certain now struggled for precision of language.

"One could argue that this entire exchange has no precise point."

"One needn't argue."

"And yet," the Peridot continued, "I would...it would...be pleasant...to continue it."

"For you."

"Yes."

There was trepidation, certainly , but not nearly as much as she was accustomed to.  It was buried under, or tangled up in other things, murkier and more difficult to define.  Insolence interpreted as bravery.  Recklessness interpreted as assertion.

She touched her fingertips to the ruins of Pink's ship and allowed the data, the images, the memories to come flooding back to her.  "Xanthe," she said at last.  It was her voice, but more than her voice.  It was Pink's voice from long ago when the Homeworld was new, giving her a name and a purpose all in one.

"Did someone give that name to you?" the Peridot asked.

At present the present was more distant than the past.  The data from the ship was more immediate, right at her fingertips, and so she did not think to respond quickly.  When she wasn't touching the ship anymore, the memories would fade, and feel as old and long-forgotten as they were.  When at last the organic matter ate away at the ruins, there would be no more memories to retrieve.

"Kesari," she murmured.  The name she had given back to Pink, in turn.  A small thing.  It did not have the same weight, the same meaning, the same purpose, yet it was all she could offer.  She watched the flashes of Pink's face for as long as she could bear it, then, at last, with something which was almost a gasp, pulled her hand away.

Nothingness.  Earth.  Organic filth.  Wandering thoughts of the failed, rebellious, familiar Peridot.  Now she was left with the tangle of emotions and only the faintest of memories to attach to them, memories of memories of memories, distant and unreal and fading.

"And someday," said Xanthe, "this wretched Earth you treasure so will take it from me."


End file.
